I chose to review the game NHL 09 developed by EA Sports. This year's edition of the award-winning hockey game has many improvements that bring realistic gameplay to a whole new level.
The core hockey action that drives the standard five-on-five play is very similar to what was seen in NHL 08. A few tweaks have been made to the artificial intelligence so that the CPU's defense is a bit tougher and more aggressive than it was last year.
Collisions have been redesigned and now feel much more natural. You'll need to preload your hits a bit more than in the past, but the reward is great. Players can be sent flying after a well lined up hit. This makes the game much more realistic than last year's release, where a hip-check could be lined up at any time resulting in a
Visually, NHL 09 is the best looking hockey game so far with its high quality player models. The animations are excellent, too, as plenty of new goalie and collision animations are in the game, which add to the realism. The downside to that is that besides a few new animation sequences, there really isn't anything new graphically.
NHL 09 isn’t just a great hockey game, it’s one of the best sports games to be released in the last decade. As with the last few releases, Create-A-Player & Create-A-Team features are still available.
With a focus on defense in NHL 09, the gameplay is now more challenging, especially on the higher difficulty settings. The AI does a great job with its defensive zone coverage, using stick-checks and stick-lifts, it makes it much more difficult to penetrate the defense and create a scoring chance.
To counter the defense you can now pull off some new moves, like protecting the puck or using the one-on-one dekeing system. If you find yourself on a breakaway, performing a one-handed deke on the goalie is highlight-worthy stuff only superstar players like Alexander Ovechkin can successfully pull off.
Some improvements could be made such as increasing the selection of equipment available when creating a new player or team. In addition, a more fluid dekeing system while skating at full speed would increase the realism of the game significantly.
Overall, NHL 09 is a superb game. I would definitely recommend it to anyone into sports, specifically hockey, or anyone who enjoys sports video games.
